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Urban Garden Project

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Uniting and amplifying the global community garden movement for food, community, and climate.

The Urban Garden Project (UGP), led by Denver Urban Gardens (DUG), is a national initiative dedicated to strengthening and advancing the community garden movement through shared learning, collaboration, and advocacy. UGP positions community gardens as essential urban infrastructure—“must-haves,” not “nice-to-haves”—for building healthy, equitable, and climate-resilient cities.

By connecting organizations, securing long-term funding, and providing shared operational resources such as back-office support, group insurance, and collective fundraising models, UGP helps local leaders focus on what truly matters: growing food, nurturing community, and creating lasting systems of resilience.

Together, we’re cultivating a national and global network of gardens that connect people, restore ecosystems, and regenerate hope.

Tell Us About Your Organization

Our Goals

  1. Unite, uplift and amplify the national and global community garden movement in thought partnership and advocacy.
  2. Position community gardens as “must haves” instead of “nice to haves” in the eyes of city planners, governments and developers.
  3. Secure long-term funding and provide resources (back office support, group insurance, etc) to bolster the operational strength of new and existing organizations so they can focus on growing food, strengthening communities, surviving and thriving.

Elements of UGP

Program Participation

Participating in the Urban Garden Project (UGP) connects your organization to a powerful network of community garden leaders working together for greater impact. Participation includes access to exclusive resources, visibility, and collaboration opportunities designed to strengthen your organization and amplify the collective voice of the community garden movement.

Investment

Sites Annual Fee
Big 25+ $500
Medium 5-25 $250
Small 1-4 $150
Individual $50

Community of Practice

The UGP Community of Practice brings together an annual cohort of community garden organizations from across the country for a day of deep learning, collaboration, and leadership development. Each organization sends two representatives—typically the Executive Director and one additional team member—for an immersive, peer-led experience focused on sharing best practices and building capacity within the community garden movement.

Held every year alongside the GreenThumb Grow Together Conference in New York City, the gathering emphasizes regional diversity and representation, ensuring that insights reflect the full range of experiences within the movement.

Participants come together to exchange strategies, explore solutions, and strengthen their leadership networks—then return home equipped to mentor and support other organizational leadership in their states or regions, amplifying impact across the U.S.

Participation in the Community of Practice annual cohort is exclusive to UGP program participants.

Consulting for Growth and Impact

UGP offers tailored consulting services designed to help community garden organizations grow, innovate, and overcome challenges. Our team works directly with member organizations to provide customized support—whether that means strengthening internal systems, developing new programs, navigating partnerships, or reimagining funding and sustainability strategies.

Through collaborative problem-solving and creative thinking, we help leaders identify what’s working, address what’s not, and chart a path forward that’s both practical and visionary. Each consulting engagement is adapted to the organization’s unique goals and context, ensuring the solutions are as grounded and regenerative as the gardens themselves.

Well Being Index (WBI)

The Well-Being Index (WBI) is UGP’s groundbreaking tool for measuring the true impact of community gardens across three co-equal pillars: Food, Community, and Climate. By tracking both outputs and outcomes, the WBI demonstrates how gardens contribute to individual, community, and societal well-being—quantifying what gardeners have always known intuitively.

Through national data collection and analysis, the WBI reveals:

  • The measurable improvements within each pillar when a community garden is established
  • The optimal “carrying capacity” for community gardens at the city, state, and national levels
  • The outsized return on investment (ROI) community gardens deliver for public health, equity, and climate resilience

The ultimate goal is to secure large-scale, reliable funding by clearly showing the transformational value of this work.

We invite organizations to utilize the WBI framework and contribute their own data to help build a shared, evidence-based case for why community gardens are essential infrastructure for thriving communities.

Professional Development Workshops

Advance your work in community gardening with specialized trainings designed for leaders, educators, and advocates in this field. These 60-minute workshops dive into the practical, financial, and organizational strategies that help gardens and the people behind them thrive.

Each session is available for $300, offering expert-led insights and actionable tools you can apply immediately to your own programs or initiatives.

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Community Gardens as Spaces of Impact

Community Gardens are places of impact. Deceptively simple, this form of urban agriculture delivers outsized ROI in the form of strong communities, healthy soil and ecosystems, and individual food sovereignty. Go deep with DUG’s theory of change and learn why community gardens are moving from a nice-to-have to a must-have in thriving cities across the country.

Money, Money, Money: Corporate Funding Strategies That Work

Drawing on real-world successes from the Denver Urban Gardens (DUG) playbook, this workshop will offer practical insights into how garden organizations can secure unrestricted corporate funding and leverage local partnerships to maximize long-term success. Through proven successful programs such as Garden and Food Forest Adoptions, Event and Educational Sponsorships, Paid Volunteer Opportunities, and Community Collaborations, participants will leave with actionable strategies to strengthen their organizations’ financial sustainability.

The Centralized Community Garden Organization: Cultivating Sturdy, Durable, Thriving Garden Communities

Explore the foundations of the DUG model, including the case for a centralized community garden organization. This discussion-based workshop invites collaboration, an exploration of potential challenges, and will give you the confidence to succeed.

Marketing Your Community Garden

Participants will explore various tools for communicating the impact of their gardens or organization. From trending digital resources to traditional outlets, we’ll explore the merits of various options to ensure inclusivity.

Food Forests & Community Orchards

Existing community garden networks can be leveraged to support food forest projects complementary to gardens and can be easier to install and raise money to support. With Denver Urban Gardens’ Food Forest Program as a case study, we’ll learn the advantages and challenges of creating food forests, and how they can serve a diverse set of goals and contexts. Using an observation and analysis of natural systems we’ll show why food forests are an essential part of a local food ecosystem.

Resource Distribution Models

Learn about the case study of DUG’s Culturally Inclusive Seeds programs as a model for supporting diverse growing and culinary traditions in our community by crowd-sourcing plant variety requests to form a catalog of hard-to-access-or-afford seed varieties appropriate to the local climate.

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Founders Group

Navera Ahmed

Deptartment of Neighborhoods Garden Coordinator

Linda Appel Lipsius

Executive Director at Denver Urban Gardens 

Carlos Martinez

Director at NYC Parks GreenThumb

Amanda Musilli

Community Agriculture & Sustainability Services Manager at City of Alpharetta

C.J. Sentell

Chief Executive Officer at The Nashville Food Project

Justin Trezza

Senior Director of Healthy Neighborhoods at Pennsylvania Horticultural Society (PHS)

Partner Organizations

Austin Parks & Recreation Community Gardening Program

Location: Austin, TX, USA

Mission: To help groups start new gardens and provide support for existing community gardens on city owned land.

Programs Offered: gardening resources (tools), on-site compost, community gardens

Learn More

City and County of Honolulu’s Recreational Community Gardening Program

Location: Honolulu, HI, USA

Mission: To provide people living in Honolulu’s densely populated communities access to garden plots.

Programs Offered: gardening resources (mulch, tools), community gardens

Learn More

Community Gardens Australia

Location: Australia (nationwide)

Mission: To connect city farms and community gardens around Australia. It is a community-based organisation linking people interested in city farming and community gardening across Australia.

Programs Offered: Community Gardens

Learn More

Community Gardens of Tucson

Location: Tucson, AZ, USA

Mission: To build community gardens where Tucsonans grow food, work and learn together, and nurture well-being in our communities.

Programs Offered: Community Gardens

Learn More

Denver Urban Gardens

Location: Denver, CO, USA

Mission: To provide access, skills, and resources for people to grow healthy food in community and regenerate urban green spaces.

Programs Offered: School gardens, food access, Giving Grove partnership, on-site compost, financial management, education, community gardens

Programs Offered: Community Gardens

Learn More

Los Angeles Community Garden Council

Location: Los Angeles, CA, USA

Mission: To strengthen communities by building and supporting community gardens where every person in Los Angeles County can grow healthy food in their neighborhood.

Programs Offered: Community Gardens

Volunteer

NYC Parks GreenThumb

Location: New York City, NY, USA

Programs Offered: school gardens, CSA, on-site compost, gardening resources (seeds, seedlings, and compost), community gardens

Volunteer

P-Patch Gardening

Location: Seattle, WA, USA

Programs Offered:  gardening resources (seeds, seedlings, and compost), community gardens

Learn More

Pennsylvania Horticultural Society

Location: Philadelphia, PA, USA

Mission: To use horticulture to advance the health and well-being of the Greater Philadelphia Region.

Programs Offered: on-site compost, compost drop-off, tool library, community gardens

Volunteer

Seed St. Louis

Location: St. Louis, MO, USA

Mission: To empower people and communities to grow food.

Programs Offered: school gardens, gardening resources (seeds, seedlings, tools), community gardens

Volunteer

The Gardens on Spring Creek

Location: Fort Collins, CO, USA

Mission: To enrich the lives of people and foster environmental stewardship through horticulture.

Programs Offered: Botanic Gardens, Community Gardens

Volunteer

The Nashville Food Project

Location: Nashville, TN, USA

Mission: To bring people together to grow, cook and share nourishing food, with the goals of cultivating community and alleviating hunger in our city.

Programs Offered: Community Gardens, Food Recovery, Gardening Resources (water and tools), Education

Volunteer

Urban Harvest

Location: Houston, TX, USA

Mission: To be a catalyst in transforming food accessibility in Greater Houston. We aim to achieve this by fostering strong partnerships with local farmers and gardeners, operating vibrant Farmers Markets, initiating mobile markets, and providing comprehensive garden education.

Programs Offered: school gardens, kids’ programming, mobile markets, gardening resources (compost, seeds, and seedlings), community gardens

Volunteer

Wasatch Community Gardens

Location: Salt Lake City, UT, USA

Mission: To increase access to growing and eating organic produce, providing hands-on opportunities for people of all ages and abilities to learn and connect through six impactful programs: Advocacy and Justice, Community Gardens, Education, Job Training, Youth and School, and Volunteers.

Programs Offered: school gardens, food access, working farm, community gardens

Volunteer